The study also found that women are more likely to do most of the housework in heterosexual couples than their male partners are, even when they work longer hours and earn more. Couples who share household chores fairly have more sex than those who stick to sexist stereotypes, new research has found.
A paper, which is due to be published in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Marriage and Family, made the discovery after analysing data on a nation-wide 2006 US study of marital satisfaction.
It found that different gender couples who reported sharing housework equally had sex 6.8 times per month on average, compared to around 5 times per month for households in which one partner did the bulk of routine housework. In households with unequal distribution of chores, the person tasked with the most work was almost always female rather than male.
Researchers defined “routine housework” as: preparing and cooking meals, washing dishes, cleaning around the house, shopping for groceries and doing laundry. They found that how frequently couples have sex also increases not only if housework overall is divided fairly, but if the individual chores are not divided by gender stereotypes; such as cooking and cleaning for women and DIY chores for men.
Another striking finding of the study was that despite recent strides in gender equality, women still do the majority of housework in most US households. In 63 per cent of homes, the majority is undertaken by women. This was found to be the case even when women work longer hours and earn more than men.
Paper author Professor Sharon Sassler from Cornell University said of the findings: “Contemporary couples who adhere to a more egalitarian division of labor are the only couples who have experienced an increase in sexual frequency compared to their counterparts of the past.
Other groups – including those where the woman does the bulk of the housework – have experienced declines in sexual frequency. This finding is particularly notable given reports indicating that sexual frequency has generally declined worldwide over the past few decades.”